In a moment nine years in the making, the Gardeners’ House in Penzance is finally opening its doors this month and welcoming the people of West Cornwall.
Our building – which celebrates the landscape of West Cornwall and the stories of its community – officially opens to the public from Tuesday 24 June.
The renovated building – which has been a stable block as well as the former home of the gardener for the sub-tropical Morrab Gardens – will now be a home to wellbeing workshops, green community projects and a sensory garden.
The Gardeners’ House team have created a welcoming and calm space to support the local community, using the natural history and the community stories to inspire people and support their wellbeing.
A sensory garden has been carefully created next to the building, providing a welcoming community space between the Gardeners’ House and the Pengarth Day Centre next door, a space used by older people in the community.
Our opening hours, from Tuesday 24 June, will be:
Tuesday to Friday: 10am – 4pm
Saturday: 10am – 2pm
The sensory garden includes art installations, inspired by community workshops run by local artists Jane Darke and Andrew Tebbs. They worked with the social prescribing team, with local schools and with the residents at Pengarth Day Centre and the community created designs inspired by illustrations and objects from the archive.
Local craftspeople were commissioned to recreate these designs in stone, metal and wood that now feature in the Sensory Garden. The garden now provides a tranquil safe space where people can reconnect with nature and hopes to enhance the lives of older people, particularly those living with dementia.
We also offer rooms for hire and event spaces to book, providing a valuable asset for our local business community.
The Gardeners’ House will also create a home for a unique archive of documents, books and illustrations. The collection will be made accessible to the public for the first time and highlight the history of Cornwall’s natural heritage.
Donated by the Hypatia Trust, the collection showcases the stories of men and women who have been custodians of the landscape of West Cornwall over the last 200 years. Its new home will mean that the important collection is safeguarded and preserved in Penzance so that the community, researchers and visitors can learn and be inspired by it.
The team at the Gardeners’ House want to continue to grow this collection, creating a living archive which keeps the stories of the local community alive. Some of these stories will inspire workshops and activities hosted by the team.
The project was the vision of the late Melissa Hardie-Budden, the founder of Hypatia Trust in Penzance.
The Gardeners’ House, which will run as a charitable organisation, received £2.2 million from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, as well as a grant of £896,000 from the Penzance Town Deal fund to help realise their vision.
It is the first of Penzance’s seven Town Deal-funded projects to open.
The Sensory Garden was made possible by generous funding from the Tanner Phoenix Trust and the Emily Bolitho Fund, administered by Cornwall Community Fund.